


Heading West

by Slanguage



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Established Relationship, Fluff, Hurt/Comfort, Love, M/M, Road Trip, Romance, Tragedy, estranged family, mentioned minor character death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-12
Updated: 2014-08-12
Packaged: 2018-02-12 22:11:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 14,160
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2126394
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Slanguage/pseuds/Slanguage
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They say, sometimes, that bad things happen in threes.</p><p>Karen Singer is diagnosed with breast cancer on Monday morning. John Winchester dies of a heart attack Tuesday afternoon. And Anna Milton dies in a car accident two minutes after midnight on Thursday.</p><p>Dean Winchester and Castiel Milton can’t stay in South Dakota. After the last funeral, they load up Dean’s Impala with the bare necessities, point the car west, and leave without telling anyone where they are going.</p><p>So they run, and they don’t look back.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Heading West

**Author's Note:**

> This story was inspired by the song “When You Come Home” by Paradise Fears. Highly recommend that song AND that amazing band.

Castiel didn’t break his stride. He threw his duffle through the open window to the backseat of the Impala, and he wrenched open the passenger door, taking care to not slam it, always thoughtful even when he was a whirlwind of grief and anger. He tugged at his tie, the one that matched his eyes, and threw the suit jacket into the back precariously, not looking to see where it landed. He leaned back into the leather seat, closing his eyes, taking a deep breath. Dean watched his boyfriend, his best friend, for a long moment, holding his breath, not knowing what to say because there were no words for the hell their last two weeks had been.

“You’re right,” Cas said, and Dean raised an eyebrow even if he couldn’t see it.

“About what?”

Cas smiled a little bitterly, a lot sadly, and opened his eyes to look at Dean when he whispered, “Bad things happen in threes.”

And, somehow, Dean didn’t need to ask him if he was sure. He didn’t need to hear a verbal reassurance that this was what Cas wanted, too. Dean could see Cas’s eyes, could see him screaming behind them, could feel the same grief in the pit of his chest, clawing at him from the inside, and he knew he didn’t need to ask again.

Dean turned the key, and the Impala roared to life beneath his fingers.

Cas closed his eyes again, and he smiled.

Dean pressed down on the gas pedal, and neither of them looked back at what they were leaving behind.

~*~

It had felt like life was turning upside down when Karen Singer came back from the doctor’s office on Monday morning, tears streaming down her face, a sheet of paper clutched in her hand. Bobby had dropped a glass the moment he had spotted her in the doorway, and it had shattered. Dean had cut his finger picking up the pieces later, hearing Karen’s sobs wander down the stairs.

“Oh my god, Bobby,” she had said. “It’s cancer. Oh my god.”

Bobby caught her before she crashed to the ground.

Dean and Cas had been sitting in the living room, their legs tangled at the ankles, watching some shitty soap opera that was oddly addicting, wasting the summer before their gap year the same way they had wasted every summer since they had met for the first time when they were ten.

Dean’s ex-military dad had settled in Sioux Falls for the primary reason of pawning off his son to his best friend when he couldn’t take care of him after his divorce from Kate, which did Dean a service because he liked the Singers better than his alcoholic father. Castiel’s sister and guardian took a teaching job at the local middle school in this nowhereville town in the hopes of evading her nosy extended family, and Cas spent most every moment with Dean from the moment they had met, so they had both ended up practically as the Singer’s children. Karen and Bobby loved having them around, so the days blurred between when Dean and Cas actually spent nights at home and when they spent them sprawled in the living room of the Singer household.

They were both frozen when they watched their parental figures break down. They were both helpless to Karen’s tears, and to Bobby’s stunned terrified expression. They didn’t say anything when Bobby guided her up the stairs, and they didn’t try to offer any words after the door to the master bedroom closed behind them.

Dean and Cas sat in silence for hours before Bobby came back down, pale. He was startled to see them there, but he didn’t ask why they had hung around because he already knew why. He told them that it was breast cancer, and that it was still in the early stages. There was hope, but it would be a long road ahead of them.

Dean and Cas spent hours that night clinging to each other in the backseat of the Impala, parked in the middle of a field, and talking in low voices about mortality.

~*~

John Winchester was acting weird when Dean emerged from his room mid-morning Tuesday and found him seated at the sofa. Sometime after one in the afternoon, John dropped to the ground, unconscious before he hit. Dean found out, sitting in the back of the ambulance, screaming as John flat-lined, that it had been a heart attack.

Dean had hated his father, and he had loved him.

He never thought about how much he would miss him until he was gone.

He never thought about all the things he had wanted to say to him until he couldn’t anymore.

Bobby and Karen took care of what needed to be taken care of. They told Dean he was too young to deal with something like this, urged him to sit down and to take deep breaths when he insisted that he had to do _something_ , and Dean spent an hour sitting in the hospital waiting room hyperventilating in between his knees, his heartbeat pounding rapidly in his chest.

Cas had showed up, horrified, two and a half hours after John died. Dean tried to lose himself in his boyfriend’s arms, in his eyes, in his smell, but he felt numb to the world around him.

He let Cas take him back to the Singer home, and he let him lay him down in the spare room that had always been unofficially his. And, now, because Dean had no one else left, it _was_ his.

Cas held Dean when he cried for two hours. He didn’t speak a word other than to tell him that it was going to be okay, and that he loved him.

Dean clung to him because, of all the things he loved, he couldn’t lose Cas, too.

~*~

The third and final hit came in the form of a phone call not long after twelve in the morning on Thursday. This hit was when Dean and Cas realized that nothing in their life would ever be fair again. It was then, that Thursday morning, when fate hit them, and they were both orphans.

The caller told Castiel that his sister, the only member of his family he had left, had been in a car crash, and that she had died on impact. There was nothing they could do to save her. He was her emergency contact.

Castiel had screamed so loud he had woken the entire Singer household.

But that hadn’t been enough to wake them up from the nightmare their lives had become. There was nothing worse than realizing none of them were sleeping.

Dean had to hold Cas up from collapsing when he had to go in to see the body. Dean held Cas when he cried the moment they exited into the hallway. Dean mumbled empty assurances until the sun came up, but it didn’t do anything, it didn’t make the world any better, and it didn’t make what they had lost anymore found.

~*~

It was amazing, the things that could happen in the span of a week.

Karen and Bobby Singer didn’t even take into account their own recent tragedy, not when their two surrogate eighteen year olds were crumbling. The four of them all worked mechanically, moving Dean out of his father’s apartment and into one of the Singers’ spare rooms on Friday. They moved Cas into that same room on Saturday. John and Anna’s belongings were packed up and put into the basement, where they would stay until they knew what to do with them, until the world stopped spinning uncontrollably around them. It got to the point that Dean was entirely sure his world would always be vertigo.

John’s funeral was on Wednesday. Dean’s ex-step-mother, who had left John once he refused to go to rehab for his alcoholism after he stumbled into their son’s second birthday party drunk, was there. Kate had swept Dean into her arms and promised him a place to go always, and invited him to her home in Minnesota, and he had numbly refused but had given her empty promises that he would consider it. Adam, John and Kate’s child and Dean’s half-brother, barely eleven years old and wide-eyed, had clung to Dean’s sleeve the entire time. Dean had wished he could protect the kid from this, from the father he knew only the best of, but he knew he couldn’t. He knew that half of Adam’s world was crashing down, too, but, eventually, he would be okay.

Cas didn’t let go of Dean’s hand the entire time.

Anna’s funeral was on Friday. A significantly larger amount of people showed up—the staff of the junior high was there, all of them, along with some current and old students of hers. No family other than Cas was there, because Cas didn’t invite them, and he didn’t _want_ them there. People got up and told stories about Anna, about how bright she was, like a shining star, and how it was such a shame she was extinguished so young. People commended her for her bravery, and mourned the brother she left behind. Cas didn’t get up and say anything. Dean didn’t think Cas knew what to say. Nothing seemed like enough, and he understood that more than anyone there.

Dean didn’t let go of Cas’s hand the entire time.

The night before then, they had talked about an idea. It went unspoken less than an hour after Anna was put into the ground that it was what they had to do.

They returned to the Singer house before Karen and Bobby would be back, before they could stop them. They each packed a duffle of clothes, and a large bag of groceries. They left a note on the table that read: _We had to go. We’ll be back. Sorry_. They left their cell phones next to the note, and Dean waited in the car while Cas ducked back into the house for one last forgotten thing.

Neither of them could breathe until they hit the border of South Dakota. And then they just kept driving.

~*~

“Do you think they still live there?” Cas asked softly.

They made it all the way to Montana before Cas asked, and Dean thought it was pretty impressive that he had managed to hold his curiosity back for so long. Dean looked down, his fingers still stroking through Cas’s hair, his head still resting on his chest, Cas’s hands curled into his shirt. His eyes were closed, but he was still awake. Dean’s heart swelled at how easily Cas fit against him, like he was made to be there, and Dean leaned down and pressed a kiss against Cas’s temple, his lips lingering against the skin. Cas’s lips twitched into a subtle smile.

“I hope so,” Dean murmured into the darkness of the shitty motel room they had rented for the night, the cheapest they could get in order to save more money for gas. They had driven for half a day, for as long as he could until he couldn’t anymore, and Cas had put his hand on his knee and had murmured that they should find a place for the night. And even so, now that they were there, neither of them could find sleep.

Dean told Cas everything. So, when Dean had asked Cas if he wanted to get out of Sioux Falls with him, Cas had said yes, and he hadn’t asked where they were going. He already seemed to know.

When Dean was four, his parents had a nasty divorce. John was in the military, which was a career with little to no opportunity to settle down for good, and Mary had been against the idea of constantly changing every couple of years, didn’t want her sons to grow up like that. Dean’s little brother, Sam, had been six months old the last time he had seen him. Mary had wanted both of the kids, but John had refused. Their compromise was that Mary would take the infant, and John would take Dean, but Dean would spend his summers with Mary. Dean remembered the last time he saw his mother—sleepy and confused, he had clung to her, and she had held him so tight. She had kissed him on the forehead and had assured him that she would see him soon, and she told him angels were watching over him, and that daddy would show him how to talk to her over the phone like a grown-up if he wanted to talk to her or his baby brother.

The moment Mary was gone, John had taken the paper with her phone number and burned it. He loaded Dean and everything that they needed into the Impala, and they went on the road. Mary had either been unable to find John and Dean again, or she had given up when she couldn’t the first few tries. Either way, it had been fourteen and a half years since Dean had seen his mother, but he thought that he knew where she was, thought that he had finally found her. And leave it to Cas not to have to ask to know that would be where they would be going the moment they left South Dakota.

Dean loved Adam, of course. Adam was his little brother, too. But there was always this empty part of Dean, this begging curiosity, where he had a million and one questions about little Sammy. Dean always had a burning desire to know what had become of his little brother, the same one he had protected from the moment Sammy came home from the hospital. Dean had wanted to get in contact with his mother for years, but he had always been afraid of his father’s retaliation.

Now, John was gone, and Dean knew better than to be afraid anymore.

It turned out that Bobby had a friend named Rufus who was a private investigator, and he had been able to pull some strings on a favor and found a phone number, and an address. Mary Campbell was an art teacher in Portland, Oregon, and she also did illustrations for children’s books on the side. She had a fourteen-year-old son named Sam Winchester who had won a number of county awards for academics. Bobby had slid Dean the information when he had turned eighteen in January, but now it was the end of June and Dean was finally going to do something about it.

Cas knew, of course. Cas always knew.

“She’s going to be so happy to see you,” Cas murmured, burrowing closer to Dean. “She’s going to be so proud of you. I wonder if Sam is going to be as much of a geek as you are.”

Dean flicked Cas on the forehead. Cas’s laughter rumbled in his chest.

“If he’s not a geek, I’ll convert him into one,” Dean promised, puffing up his chest. “No kid brother of mine is going to go through life not knowing at least three phrases in Klingon. And he’ll have to name at least six Doctors and their companions. It’s probably a law in most states. No, it definitely is.”

“Of course it is,” Cas said, barely concealing his entertainment.

They sat in a companionable silence for a long span of minutes before they spoke next, Dean’s fingers combing through Cas’s hair rhythmically, Cas’s breath on Dean’s chest as soothing as a heartbeat.

“Do you think she’s even actually going to let me in?” Dean suddenly asked, insecurity leaking into his voice, and he practically winced when Cas tensed. “Like, it’s weird, isn’t it? To just suddenly knock on a stranger’s door one day and say ‘hey, I’m your son and my dad is dead, can I come in?’”

“I think she will be happy to see you,” Cas said, and then he paused to push himself up onto his elbow, leaning over Dean, looking down at him with blue eyes that had transfixed Dean from day one. “She may be surprised, sure, but she will want to get to know you. Anyone would. You are an amazing person, Dean. Anyone can tell that just by looking at you. If I could see your soul, it would be extraordinary. She’ll see that, and she will love you the same way she has always loved you from the last time she had even seen you.”

Dean looked up at Cas, desperate to understand, and he whispered vulnerably, “You think?”

“I know,” Cas murmured, and then pressed their lips together.

Dean touched Cas’s face lightly, trailing his finger tips around to the back of Cas’s neck until his fingers curled into his hair, pressing him closer for a handful of seconds before they parted, leaving inches between their lips, just far enough for their eyes to meet. Dean looked up at Cas, begging him to help him understand, and the smile on Cas’s lips told him that he heard his silent plea loud and clear.

Cas leaned down and whispered, “I love you,” against Dean’s lips, and they lost themselves in each other for the next few hours, and, for the most disastrous few weeks of their lives, they had somehow never felt so free before.

~*~

One of the memories Dean knew he would hang onto forever was when they crossed the Oregon border. The windows were down, and the loud sound of Led Zeppelin blasted from the radio. Cas was singing to it loudly, his deep bass voice reverberating under Dean’s skin, a bright smile on his face that could have lit up the entire world. Cas sang, his hair ruffled from the wind blowing through the window, his legs tucked underneath of him, wearing dark jeans and a black button-down, the sleeves rolled up and one too many buttons undone at the top, his white socks standing out against the dark, his rugged red Converse laying on the ground in front of him. Cas looked over at Dean, glowing like sunshine, and Dean smiled back, his cheeks straining with the motion, his eyes crinkling in the corners the way he hated, but Cas brightened just to see that look on his face and, if Cas leaned over and pressed an innocent kiss to his face and Dean let out a laugh like wind chimes, it was their memory to hold forever, and no one else’s.

~*~

“What if they go to church?” Dean asked anxiously.

“Dean,” Cas said, squeezing his hand, “there’s a car in the driveway.”

“Maybe they walked.”

“ _Dean_.”

Dean had parked the Impala at the curb of the address that was written in Bobby’s scrawl, a slim two-story home on the suburban outskirts of the city. It was painted a soft blue with white trim, and there was a little windmill on the lawn by the steps leading up to the porch. Dean and Cas—mostly Dean—had been staring at it for the last five minutes, his hands clutching the steering wheel. One of Cas’s hands laid over one of Dean’s, the other on his knee, his thumb rubbing soothing circles.

He couldn’t do it. He had come all this way, but there was no way he would be able to walk up to that front door and force his way into Mary Campbell’s life.

“She’s your mom,” Cas whispered soothingly, reassuringly. “She won’t send you away.”

“I can’t do this.”

“I’ll be right behind you.”

“What if she doesn’t want me?”

Cas leaned around him and kissed him softly on the temple, not needing words.

Dean took a deep breath.

“Okay?” Cas whispered, nuzzling his head softly against Dean’s jaw.

Dean took another deep breath before he nodded slowly and pried his grip from the steering wheel, his heart pounding. He glanced back to Cas uneasily, but Cas was giving him an encouraging look, his lips tipping into a smile, but Dean couldn’t help but to hold his breath when he climbed out of the Impala, holding the door open as Cas scooted out of the driver’s side as well. Dean took his time closing the door, locking the car, breathing in the cool and clear air, thinking about his and Cas’s silent awe as they approached the city and saw the mountains surrounding it, caging it inside. Cas took his hand as they walked up to the house and Dean gripped it tightly, sure his palm was sweaty but Cas didn’t care.

Dean hesitated on the porch, his hand raised to press the doorbell. He glanced once more at Cas. He knew he wouldn’t have had the guts to press the button if he hadn’t have looked back and seen the pride in Cas’s eyes.

Dean hit the doorbell, and held his breath.

“I got it, Sam!” a female voice called from inside of the house, muffled, but Dean’s heart nearly bounced out his chest at the sound, and he would have turn around and ran if Cas hadn’t been anchoring him there. Dean thought he was going to throw up as he heard the footsteps approaching, when the door unlocked, and the door swung open.

The woman standing before him was just as beautiful as he remembered her. Dean felt like he was choking on all the words he didn’t know how to say as he looked at her, feeling like he was seeing her for the first time.

In a way, he was.

Dean’s mother looked back at him, her blonde hair long and spilling around her, outlining her face like holy light around an angel. She was wearing a yellow sundress, and her eyes were the same color as Dean’s.

“Are you Mary Winchester?” Dean somehow managed to ask her, his voice much more nervous than he had meant for it to be.

She blinked, seeming surprised, and then looked at Dean with a new intensity, her eyes widening.

“I am,” she said, and Dean couldn’t breathe.

“My name is Dean,” he told her, and her hands came up to cover her mouth, her eyes wide with wonder. “And I’m your son.”

“Dean?” Mary whispered, sounding stunned, her voice shaking. Her hands fell and she stumbled forward a step, raising her hands to touch his face, and Dean noticed Cas slip his hand from Dean’s, knowing he didn’t need him to keep him in the moment anymore. Mary looked at Dean eagerly, tears welling in her eyes, a big smile flashing across her face, nearly blinding him. “Oh my god, Dean, oh my _god_ , you’re actually _here_!”

She suddenly threw her arms around him, letting out peals of laughter like the sun coming through rainclouds, and Dean made a strangled sound in his throat before he lifted his arms and let them curl around her thin frame, breathing in the smell of sugar and paint.

“Look how grown up you are!” she cheered, pulling away from him but keeping hold on his shoulders, a bright smile still on her face even as tears ran down her cheeks. “You’re so handsome! And tall! I just—I can’t believe you’re here!”

“Yeah,” Dean said, and then let out a weak laugh. “Me either. Took me long enough to find you.”

Mary sniffled, reaching up and rubbing at her tears, and that was when she noticed Cas. She started, turning to look at him, her smile turning embarrassed. “Oh, goodness, here I am, crying in front of the world. What’s your name, sweetheart?”

“This is Cas—Castiel,” Dean introduced, reaching back and tugging Cas closer by his wrist, feeling him hesitantly step up next to him. “He’s my boyfriend.”

Mary whimpered before she suddenly threw her arms around both of them and cheered, “ _You are the cutest couple I have ever seen!_ ”

“You hear that, Dean?” Cas teased. “Your mom thinks we’re _cute_.”

Mary let out a strangled laugh before pulling away, looking at the two of them excitedly, nearly bouncing up and down. “Oh my gosh, both of you, come in! This is—I have no words for this. I am so, _so_ happy that you’re here, oh my _goodness_. Dean. Oh my god, _Dean_. I’ve been trying to find you for years and _years_ —and now you’re _here_!”

“I’m here,” Dean whispered.

Mary stepped back to let them into the house, and Dean paused before following her over the threshold, Cas meandering in behind him with only slightly more uncertainty. Dean’s fingers were still gripping Cas’s wrist as Dean looked around the entry nervously, looking at the sneakers and Converse and boots littering the cubbyholes that couldn’t belong to anyone but his little brother, and Dean’s heart sped up even faster, to the point he was pretty sure he was going to keel over.

The inside of the house was light, open, and covered with artwork—of flowers, of sunsets, of mountains and lakes and cabins in the woods and lighthouses on rocks and skyscrapers towering into the clouds. Dean glanced around, trying to drink in it all, trying to understand everything that he could from this family he wanted to join, from this family he should have been a part of all along.

“Sam!” Mary called in the direction of the stairway, smiling. “Sam, you’re never going to _believe_ who’s at the door!”

“Santa?” a voice sarcastically replied in a gasp from somewhere above them.

Mary ignored him, turning back to Dean, and Dean could barely believe it because _that was Sam’s voice_ and _he was about to meet Sammy again_ and he was pretty sure he was going to lose consciousness at some point today.

“He’s been wanting to meet you for so long,” Mary whispered, tears rolling down her face again. “He’s always been curious about his big brother.”

Dean could barely swallow. He couldn’t see Cas’s face, unable to look away from the staircase, but he was sure his grin was blinding. Dean felt Cas take one small step back, and he wanted to tell him not to leave him, but he knew that Cas was just giving him the space that he didn’t know he needed. Dean wanted to reach out and touch Cas, to feel the reassurance of his presence, but he had to do this on his own.

Dean was taking a blind step into reality, and this was it. He had met his mother. She was happy to see him. And now he was going to see his baby brother, now fourteen, and he was going to get to know the side of his family that John had kept him from his entire life.

Steps were heard on the stairway, and then a body was swinging around, turning to face where Dean and Cas and Mary were standing, Dean probably looking like he was watching a nuclear bomb explode in the middle of a populated city, Mary still with tears in her eyes and staining her cheeks. The kid that could only be Sam paused, caught off-guard by Mary’s expression, his gaze turning curiously to Dean before snapping back to his mother. Dean stared at Sam, his heart beating in his throat.

He was tall, maybe even taller than Dean’s six-foot-one, a little gangly, and his hair was cut shaggy. He had dark hazel eyes and, for some reason, Dean was entirely sure that he smiled a lot. Sam looked at Dean curiously, looking him up and down, before turning back to Mary.

“Sam,” Mary said, her voice soft, her hands clasped at her chest, “this is Dean. Dean, you remember Sam?”

“Yeah,” Dean said, and his voice broke.

Sam blinked once, slowly, and then demanded incredulously, “Wait, _Dean_?”

Mary nodded, smiling, and then Sam was suddenly in front of Dean, throwing his arms around him and squeezing him in a bear hug, nearly knocking the breath out of him. Dean immediately wrapped his arms around his little— _little?_ —brother, thumping him hard on the back, letting out a loud boom of shocked laughter.

“Wow,” Sam said, and then he said again, “Wow!”

“You’re a bit bigger than the last time I saw you, Sammy,” Dean joked weakly as they pulled away, Sam staring at him eagerly, Dean looking back just as desperately. “Been eating your veggies?”

“I can’t believe you’re here,” Sam said, looking back at Mary, who had her hands over her mouth, hiding what must have been a blinding smile as she looked at her sons, reunited for the first time since either of them were old enough for preschool. “I just—I’ve been trying to find you, on Facebook and things, but I couldn’t—you were nowhere—”

“He’s probably the only kid our age without a Facebook,” Cas offered from behind Dean, and he stepped forward and offered his hand when Sam turned his attention to him. “I’m this tool’s boyfriend and tagalong. Nice to meet the family.”

“Wow,” Sam said again.

“How about I get us all some lemonade, and we sit down at the table and talk?” Mary offered, suddenly buzzing with energy again. “Dean, Cas, you just kick off your shoes right there. Sam, go move your books. Are you boys hungry?”

Dean and Cas opened their mouths to tell her no, but Dean’s stomach growled loudly in that exact moment. Cas sent him an exasperated look as both Sam and Mary burst out laughing.

“Sandwiches, too, then,” Mary giggled, and then waved them on. “Go, go. Five minutes.”

Sam sent Dean one more eager look before ducking through a doorway into where the table must be, and Mary skipped into the opposite doorway to the kitchen, leaving Dean and Cas alone for the first time since the mayhem started. Dean turned to Cas, feeling a little bit like he had been electrocuted and then spun around a couple hundred times, but Cas was smiling so wide it looked like his face would split. It was the happiest Dean had seen him since before Anna died, and it made something even warmer make a home for itself in his chest.

“See?” Cas said, nudging his shoulder before moving to untie the laces of his ratty Chucks. “I told you they would be happy to see you.”

Dean just leaned forward and kissed him. It was always the easiest way to get him to shut up with the _“I told you so”s_.

~*~

Once they were all settled around a dining room table with six chairs, Dean and Cas on one side and Mary and Sam bouncing with excitement on the other, sandwiches and pitchers of lemonade in between them, the questions began.

“Does John know you’re here?” Mary asked Dean, choosing that as her first question. Cas grimaced and Dean flinched, and they both glanced at each other, both obviously having hoped that they would be able to dance around the topic of the newly departed until at least a little bit later.

“Ah,” Dean said slowly. “Not exactly.”

“What do you mean?” Mary asked, suddenly concerned for all the wrong reasons. Dean glanced at Cas, but Cas sent him a look that told him to just fess up, so he did.

“John died last week,” Dean told them slowly. “Heart attack. A friend of a friend, a PI, managed to find your address a couple of months ago, so Cas and I figured we would head out here.”

Sam leaned back in his seat, looking surprised. Mary just looked pitying.

“I’m so sorry you had to go through that alone,” she whispered to Dean.

“I wasn’t alone,” he told her, and then gave her a soft smile.

“Do you have someplace to stay there?” Mary demanded, mom-mode immediately on, sitting up a little straighter. “Where do you live? Did you drive or fly here?”

“Um,” Dean said. “Yes, Sioux Falls, and we drove.” Cas turned to give him a pointed look, and Dean responded by rolling his eyes and correcting, “Okay, _I_ drove. It’s nothing personal, Cas, you know no one drives my baby but me. House rules.”

Cas rolled his eyes.

“South Dakota?” Mary asked, and then closed her eyes. “Of course. _Bobby_.”

Dean nodded. “I’ve pretty much been living with him anyway since we moved there, so it’s no big deal.”

“Does he know you’re here?”

Crickets could practically be heard in Dean and Cas’s silence.

Mary groaned. “Should I expect police to show up at my door?”

“No, he knows where we are,” Dean said. “Technically. He’s not stupid, he’ll guess. Context clues.”

“I’m going to pretend like I didn’t hear the last part of this conversation,” Mary very wisely decided, but there was a small grin on her face as she shook her head. “You graduated just recently, didn’t you? Congratulations, both of you! Got any college plans?”

“Not currently. Gap year. Cas here, the smart asshole, was thinking about coming out to this coast for school.”

Cas send him a glare before correcting, “Stanford University, Dean. California. And I probably won’t go. I only was gonna apply on a dare from Anna—” Cas suddenly broke off, and then looked away. Mary somehow knew better than to ask, so she just elected to ignore it, still smiling.

“Where did you and your father go, after the divorce?” Mary asked, her voice a little sad, and Sam glanced back to her with encouragement in his eyes, and it was still so surreal for Dean to think of Sammy as an actual young adult.

“That’s a good one,” Dean said, and then laughed a little. “We didn’t stay much of anyplace for a long time. We didn’t settle really until I was seven in Minnesota, where John got with Kate, and then they had my—our—brother, Adam. He just turned eleven now. But John and Kate split when Adam was about two and a half, and John took me to Sioux Falls, and we’ve been there ever since. To be honest, I think it was Bobby that wouldn’t let him leave once he got a decent hold on me. And then Cas moved in down the block and we started wrecking havoc all over town, and Bobby had a new reason to force John to keep me there. Now both of us don’t have much of a reason to stay other than Bobby and his wife Karen.”

“This trip was spontaneous,” Cas explained to Mary and Sam, “and not.”

Dean nodded in agreement. “I—I always wanted to meet you both, so bad. But I knew John would have flipped if I tried.”

“I never should have let him take you,” Mary murmured, closing her eyes. “I had a feeling this would happen, all of it, but I didn’t know how to stop him. I didn’t have the money to take him to court, so I just let him—I’m so, _so_ sorry, Dean, I—”

“Mar—,” Dean started to say, and then cleared his throat and corrected emotionally, “ _Mom_. It’s okay. It’s fine. The past is past. I’m here now.”

She still looked so, so guilty, but she nodded to show that now was not the time to talk about it, that the conversation could move on, and Dean was more than happy to pretend like the past was actually in the past.

But Dean wasn’t that stupid.

“Enough about me,” Dean joked, turning the conversation on his mother and his brother, and he spotted Cas take a slow deep breath. “All I know about you two is your address and what little Rufus could find. Though, I’m kinda curious—why Portland? Seems a little random.”

And then Mary was off, telling Dean all sorts of stories about her family’s trips to Oregon when she was a child and how much she had taken to it, how she used to paint scenes from her memories of it or from pictures she had taken on a disposal camera. (“I’m an art teacher,” she explained what they already knew, but they didn’t interrupt her. “I also do some illustrations, but my heart will always be in painting—even if I’m not all that amazing at it.” Dean had taken a long look at the painting in the dining room and had firmly disagreed with her negative viewpoint on her talents.) She talked about the charm of the city and the pull of the mountains and the beauty of the wildlife, and Sam broke in to tell Dean and Cas about an independent bookstore named Powell’s that took up the entirety of a city block and was about four stories tall in some areas and had most every book imaginable. Just the thought of an independent bookstore normally made Cas salivate, but hearing about one with a wide selection practically made Dean’s boyfriend’s knees turn to jelly.

“I told you he would probably be a nerd,” Dean told Cas proudly.

Sam scowled at him. “What’s wrong with being a nerd?”

“Absolutely nothing,” Dean explained to him, grinning. “I was hoping this would be the case.”

Sam muttered a response under his breath in a fictional language that Dean—and, by extension, Cas—instantly recognized. Dean reached over and grabbed Cas’s shirt so hard that he nearly knocked the breath straight out of the other boy’s chest.

“Oh god,” Cas muttered breathlessly, looking between the two brothers.

“What?” Mary asked, confused, but Dean was staring at his little brother, wide-eyed, frenzied.

“You speak Klingon?” Dean whispered, his eyes practically falling out of his head.

Mary groaned, exasperated, as Sam’s eyes went just as wide.

“Can we keep him?” Sam asked Mary, his smile bright enough to blind, and the whole table erupted into loud laughter that could only be shared by kindred spirits, searching souls, who had finally found each other.

They were so much more alike than they had imagined.

Dean, for his cool-guy exterior, was a big fan of terrible sci-fi novels and cult television shows. Dean could fix the ’67 Chevy Impala’s engine with his eyes closed, but he also ran a Tumblr that talked about scientific theories about how Moriarty could have survived the rooftop scene at the end of _Sherlock_ season two. Dean wore combat boots and a leather jacket and ripped jeans and old rock band tees, but he spoke Klingon fluently and had seen every episode of D _octor Who_ to ever air and he has seen the Nolan _Batman_ movies way too many times to ever admit out loud (although Cas was always more than happy to tell the number to people and watch their faces contort in horror). Dean was the kind of person that fit into more than one category, more than one world. Those worlds felt like they were merging in the Campbell-Winchester home, and Dean felt so at peace that he almost forgot that he had only been there for a few hours.

The four of them talked animatedly through the evening into the late night, topics bouncing around and transforming in their wake. Dean talked about how cars and true crime were pretty much his only academic interests and Cas talked about his love of stories and Sam told them about how he was going to become a lawyer and live in California and work for the ACLU. Dean and Sam spent twenty minutes arguing over William Shatner’s Captain Kirk and Chris Pine’s while Mary ordered Chinese takeout, and then they sprawled on the couch in the living room, Cas burrowed into Dean’s side comfortably, their feet on the table, and they talked until the sun was a distant memory, and their yawns were too loud and frequent to keep ignoring.

“There’s a guest room right across from Sam’s,” Mary informed them as they got up, scuttling around the room and cleaning up the mess they had made, waving them off when all three of them had attempted to lend a hand. “You two must be exhausted from that drive—thank me later. Just go get some sleep, and we’ll take the day off tomorrow and go see the city. Sam—want to start making the bed while they get their bags?”

Sam nodded dutifully and loped to the stairs, taking them two at a time until he disappeared, Dean and Cas taking that moment to make their leave, ducking back out to the porch and into the stagnant summer air in their bare feet, both of them pausing and looking out around them, taking in the new surroundings and how quickly their lives had taken a turn for something new and great. Cas reached over and took Dean’s hand, using it to tug him into his chest, and Dean immediately relaxed against him, pressing his lips to the hollow of Cas’s throat.

“See?” Cas murmured, running a hand through Dean’s hair. Dean shivered. “I told you it would be fine.”

“I know you did,” Dean whispered against his skin, ducking his face into Cas’s neck as he felt the emotions roll through his chest, leaving him vulnerable, and he swallowed hard. “Thank you for coming out here with me. I know it was too much to ask.”

“It wasn’t,” Cas insisted just as softly, his hands curling tighter against Dean’s back. “You know I would do anything for you.”

“You know that it’s okay,” Dean murmured, “if _you’re_ not okay, right?”

For a moment, Cas didn’t say anything. And then he pulled away, just far enough that he could press a kiss onto Dean’s forehead, and he whispered against his face, “I know.”

Dean nodded back and, in their magical way where they didn’t need words, they moved away from each other and started for the Impala, pulling their bags from the back instead of throwing them in, locking the car up instead of pressing the gas pedal, heading toward something instead of running away. To Dean, it felt like the best feeling in the world—and if he knew anything about the smile on Cas’s face, he felt that it was safe to say that Cas felt the same.

~*~

The Campbell-Winchester household was filled with much earlier risers than the Singer household, so Cas and Dean were coerced out of bed with the sun at the temptation of fresh coffee and eggs and bacon, with wasn’t all that bad of a deal if Dean got down to thinking about it. He was willing to forgive his newfound mother and brother from coaxing him from his warm bed with Cas, their limbs wrapped around each other and their body heat shared and more comforting than a favorite blanket. Everything felt a lot more okay sitting around a proper breakfast table, Mary with her hair in a sloppy bun and Sam in Spiderman pajama pants and Cas’s hair disheveled, smiling and laughing and joking around glasses of orange juice and pieces of toast. This was the exact kind of life Dean had always wanted, the kind he had daydreamed about when his father was passed out on the sofa with a bottle of Jack Daniel’s still clenched in his grip.

To Dean, this was the stuff of fairy tales. Everything felt like one elaborate, convoluted dream, and he was waiting to wake up any second now.

Cas turned to him and smiled when he caught him looking, and Dean knew this couldn’t be a dream.

His dreams were never so beautiful.

~*~

They took to the city mid-morning, Dean driving the Impala because of the way Sam’s jaw had dropped when he had spotted it. Mary had laughed despite herself, smiling sadly at the site of the familiar car, and Cas relinquished his shotgun privilege to allow Sam to sit there instead. Sam started grinning the moment the door opened with a creak, relaxing into the seat as if he had been sitting there every day for his entire life. Dean rolled down the windows and let the summer air carry the keening sounds of rock ‘n’ roll, and Cas leaned forward until his forearms were pressed against the top of the front seat as the city loomed into view, a concrete jungle with an entirely different atmosphere. Dean glanced over at Cas as they approached, and his boyfriend’s eyes were as wide as saucers, entirely awestruck.

Dean couldn’t stop smiling.

They parked in an overpriced lot in the middle of the city and just started walking, finding a marketplace by the river to wander through before stopping for lunch at Voodoo Donuts, where Dean ate way too much and complained for nearly an hour until Sam threatened to push him into traffic. Mary told them about different murals and sculptures and other pieces of art as they passed, and Sam and Cas took a few moments to marvel over art in the form of a larger-than-life chess board, ending up bickering about the best way the half-finished game could be won, and Mary and Dean hung back grinning, watching the person that meant the most to them grow passionate about what they loved.

Dean’s stomach growled when they passed by a large gathering of food trucks on the way to Powell’s bookstore, and Sam lectured Dean on the danger of heart disease the entire time he ate a chili corndog, simply rolling his eyes at his pesky little brother and retorting that he didn’t know how the kid could find enjoyment in rabbit food.

The second Dean and Cas caught sight of the bookstore, at least three or four floors high and a city block around, they took one look at each other, wide-eyed, before they burst into a sprint, Sam and his long gangly legs catching up to them almost instantly, while Mary laughed from behind them, taking her time.

They all split into different directions the moment they stepped into the room—Sam headed for the smart-people books about law and philosophy and other intellectual topics that Dean couldn’t fathom being fun to read; Cas immediately started following the signs to the Young Adult section; and Dean lost at least fifteen minutes in the true crime novels.

The next time he saw Cas, his boyfriend had somehow managed to find a signed John Green book among the stacks, and spent the remaining time in the store clutching it to his chest, his eyes wide.

Dean would never admit to crying at the end of _The Fault in Our Stars_ , but he didn’t really have to—Cas had been there, and he’d had to rock him as he cried onto his shoulder, whispering to him unhelpfully, “It gets worse.” Now, as an automatic reaction, Dean scowled every time he saw the familiar powder blue, black, and white cover, but Cas remained entirely giddy and excited and passionate about it, and who was Dean to fault him for that?

They left the store six books heavier—Mary with a cookbook, Sam with two new-age looking texts, Dean with a true crime and a compilation of Sherlock Holmes stories, and Cas with his treasure—and Dean didn’t know the last time his face had hurt from smiling so much.

~*~

“You can’t ask me to chose an Avenger,” Dean told his brother, horrified. Sam smirked up at him, hanging upside down off of the couch, and rolled his eyes exaggeratedly.

“It’s not a hard question, Dean. Especially since the answer is so clearly Tony Stark.”

“I’m going to have to go with Steve Rogers,” Dean said with determination, nodding to himself with his own decision as he continued, “His shoulder-to-waist ratio is of the same dimensions as a Dorito, and he’s the perfect soldier. Humility, humanity, loyalty, all of that. Stark might be vital and brave and all that, but he’s not Captain Rogers, and that’s a fact.”

Cas was doing a terrible job of hiding his smirk behind one of Dean’s books he had stolen from his duffle, as if he hadn’t brought enough books for himself. He glanced up and met Dean’s narrowed gaze, and promptly smirked and got to his feet, stating, “I’m headed to bed. Have fun equating Hollywood stars to potato chips.”

“You don’t know the true meaning of art, Novak!” Dean called after him as his boyfriend headed up the stairs, and Cas left him with a dismissive hand wave before he disappeared from sight. Dean turned back to Sam, frowning. “I feel personally victimized by his betrayal.”

“You and my best friend Charlie would totally get along,” Sam managed to get out through snorting laughter, rolling to right himself on the couch, settling down in another contorting position with his back against the coffee table and his shins against the couch, scrunched up like he was trying to blend into the background like a chameleon. Dean leaned back into the couch, stretching his legs to rest his feet against the coffee table.

Dean was almost surprised by how easily it was for he and Sam to slip into a familiar rhythm at the same time that he wasn’t—for how much time he had spent speculating what his little brother would be like once he met him, never once had Dean imagined that he would be someone that he wouldn’t get along with. He always considered that Sam would be a friend, and now it felt even deeper than that, like they were allies against the world, and Dean couldn’t be more thankful.

All Dean had wanted ever since he had been slipped the address of Mary Campbell was to be accepted there, to find a home and a family there, and he had found it like a blind man feeling for colors in the dark. It was astounding, the relief he felt.

Sam was an added part of that. Dean had always felt like a failure for a brother with Adam, because Adam and Kate had always felt like unwanted intrusions to him in his life, even if Kate was nothing other than kind to him and Adam was just a defenseless kid. Dean felt like a shitty older brother, but he felt like he could do better with Sam. They were starting from practically a blank slate, two personalities set to either clash or compliment, and that somehow felt more reassuring than having to take the bet that time will be kind with a developing mind.

Dean and Sam had already reached the camaraderie of people who had known each other their entire lives, and they had only met about twenty-four hours ago. If that wasn’t cause to believe that Dean had been fated to make it here, to slide seamlessly into his mother’s world, Dean didn’t know what it could possibly be.

“Can I ask you something?” Sam asked into the silence, the dim lights casting shadows on his thoughtful face, and Dean kept silent to allow him to chance to ask. Sam looked over at him, chewing on his lip, and asked, “What was our dad like?”

Dean leaned back, and looked at his little brother.

There were so many ways he could answer that. He could tell Sam the whole truth—that their father wasn’t as much of a hero as Dean had wanted him to be, as he had made him out to be in his mind. He could tell Sam about the drunken nights where John would stumble into the apartment and scream at Dean until his voice was hoarse, blaming him for Mary leaving, telling him that he was useless and not worth the trouble. He could tell Sam how John had taken swings at Dean constantly before he had grown into his height and had towered closer to John, just as imposing, and only then had John backed off. He could have told his little brother about his broken sense of loyalty to the man, how he thought that he had to stick at John’s side or he would be a bad son. Dean had a million words of scorn on the tip of his tongue to tell Sam, to shine him in the light that Dean had been seeing him his entire life, but he took one look at Sam’s hopeful face, imagining all of the ways the kid must have built their father up to being, and Dean didn’t have the heart to crush him.

So Dean said, “He was a hard worker. He was always working his hardest, doing his best. He taught me everything that I know about cars and mechanics—he even taught me a lot about police work, and he always stressed that hard work was the only way to be successful. He—he always took care of me, even times were rough, even when I didn’t think he was doing the best, but he was. He was—he was a man, I guess. We had our differences, but he was my dad. So, I guess, that just essentially made him my hero, no matter what. You know?”

Sam hadn’t had John Winchester, and he was the best for it—he’d had Mary. So he nodded, wide eyed and contemplative, and smiled blindingly at Dean the moment it was apparent that he had run out of things to say.

“Thanks, Dean,” Sam breathed softly in the room, sitting there a moment to collect his thoughts before he twisted himself out of his cramped position and hopped onto his feet, stretching his arms over his head. “I’m going to bed. I’ll see you in the morning?”

“Sure will,” Dean told him, and he watched Sam wander away, waiting until he was far enough gone to let out the harsh breath he had been holding, leaning his head back until it rested on the back of the couch, closing his eyes.

The couch dipped beside him, and he opened his eyes. Mary was looking at him, her hands folded in her lap and her legs pulled up to sit Indian style on the cushion. She smiled faintly when he looked at her, and she watched her look down at her hands, her shoulders curling into herself protectively.

“I wanted to thank you for what you said to him,” she murmured, her bright eyes meeting his. “For lying to him.”

“Isn’t that my job?” Dean teased weakly. “Protect and look after my little brother?”

She closed her eyes, and breathed in. “I never knew what to say to him,” she allowed softly, “when he asked. I never knew what to say. Thank you for saying it for me.”

“I guess we both know the joy it was to live with John Winchester, huh?” Dean asked, trying to turn up one of the corners of his mouth in a pathetic smile, but he knew it fell short. Mary’s gaze was so sad, so defeated, that he couldn’t even bother to fight his instinct to reach out and put his hand on both of hers. She gripped back tightly, looking down at their hands.

“I never wanted that for you,” she admitted sadly. “I was terrified that he might take it out on you. But he wouldn’t budge on letting me have you both, and I couldn’t afford a lawyer.”

“You don’t have to explain it to me, Mom,” Dean assured her, smiling comfortingly for real this time, and she fed off of his peace, his hope. Dean was humbled that a woman filled light thought that he was pure enough to lean on. “I came out of it, and I think I turned out alright.”

“You did,” she whispered, and then she shifted so that she could wrap her arms around his shoulders, squeezing him tightly, burying her head in his shoulders. He curled his arms around her petite frame, holding her softly like she was fragile, rubbing reassuring circles on her back as she just held him. Dean’s eyes slid shut, not used to a mother’s touch, and he felt his chest expanding with how much he loved his mother, and how much he would miss her when he had to go back to South Dakota and face his life.

But, for now, it was just him and his mother shrouded in darkness, reunited and connected by a shared past that they didn’t need to share with words, and Dean was willing to hold onto that for as long as he could before he had to let go.

~*~

One week after Dean and Cas showed up on his mother’s doorstep, Sam went out with his friends for a few hours, and he ended up coming back with a short redhead with a pixie face, a shirt that read ‘Did you try turning it off and then on again?’, and a Hermione Granger-themed backpack. She walked straight into the house, yelling a hello to Mary, who was bustling about the kitchen, kicking off her shoes and discarding her backpack haphazardly on the floor. It was then that she spotted Cas’s Doc Martens lined up neatly against the wall that she frowned, looking up to Sam.

“Since when do you have style?” she demanded, sounding skeptical. Dean and Cas, who were sitting on the loveseat with Cas’s laptop set up between them with Dean’s Tumblr dash dominating the screen, turned and smirked at each other.

“Those aren’t mine,” Sam told her, sighing like he had to muster the patience to deal with the girl, but a smirk was pulling at the corners of his mouth. “Those are my brother’s boyfriend’s.”

The girl blinked, and then said, “Since when do you have a gay brother?”

Sam’s expression of utter defeat was enough to send Cas and Dean over the edge, the two of them bursting out laughing and drawing enough attention to them that they could have hung a flashing neon banner and it would have been less subtle. The redhead turned to look at them, her eyebrows practically touching her hairline, and she blinked.

“Whoa,” she said. “You two are the dreamiest couple I have ever seen in my life.”

“I cannot agree more,” Mary said, appearing in the doorway, smiling. “Staying for dinner, Charlie?”

“Probably,” the girl, Charlie, admitted reluctantly, grinning sheepishly. “Sorry about the short notice, Ms. C.”

Mary waved her off and assured her, “We’re only having chicken nuggets.”

“Awesome,” Sam and Dean remarked dreamily simultaneously, and they both shot each other identical grins.

“Ugh,” Charlie said. “This fraternal connection is starting to make me sick. I take it you’re the hunky elder brother to this gangly piece of flounder over here?”

“That’s me,” Dean confirmed, nodding. “I’m Dean. This is Cas.”

“As you heard, I’m Charlie,” she greeted, diving over the back of the couch and flopping down on it heavily, spreading her arms and sprawling into the piece of furniture, evaluating Dean like he was a leather jacket on sale for cheap, before she asked, “Do you play World of Warcraft?”

Softly, beside him, Castiel sighed.

“I love this town,” Dean announced cheerfully, and then ended up in an hour-long discussion with Charlie about levels and classifications and cheat codes, to the soundtrack of Sam and Cas sighing in blatant disinterest.

~*~

“I don’t like that picture,” Dean rejected the choice, scrunching up his nose in distaste and knocking Cas’s hand away from the track pad. “I happy smile like a serial killer that just got pardoned. I’m sure you have another picture.”

“But one so G-rated?” Cas asked, sighing wistfully. “I can’t say for certain.”

Sam groaned from Cas’s other side. “Can you two not flirt for, like, twenty seconds? You’re making the two-minute process of setting up a Facebook account take forty minutes and counting.”

“You’re the one that insisted I need one,” Dean pointed out, frowning at the little square with a gray outline of a person. “Can’t I just leave it without a picture? I’m just using it for you and Mom. And probably Charlie. She’s pretty chill.”

“I’ve created a monster, introducing you two,” Sam concluded miserably, shaking his head. “But yes, Dean, you need a picture. This isn’t open heart surgery—just pick one.”

“None of them are good,” Dean moaned.

“I thought the last one was nice,” Mary observed innocently as she passed by, her hands covered in paint and wearing a pair of stained overalls. She squinted at him. “Why are you being so picky?”

“I hate pictures,” Dean grumbled, leaning away from the computer and crossing his arms over his chest, frowning. “Cas, if I trust you with this for the sake of my sanity, will you not betray me?”

“I will try my hardest,” Cas told him flatly, and then rolled his eyes as he started clicking, Mary and Sam crowding in behind him to go through the albums of pictures Cas had stored on his computer, since he and Dean both used the machine since the moment Anna had got it for him for a Christmas gift. He was sure there were plenty more embarrassing ones that they would see in their search, but Dean was tired, and he didn’t know how to work technology much further than point-and-click.

He must have only gotten two hours of sleep last night, up until the deep morning staring at the ceiling and worrying viciously about how Karen Singer was doing.

He and Cas had left two weeks ago at this point, and they hadn’t made a move to contact the couple that had practically helped raise them since. They didn’t have their cell phones but Dean had the home number memorized, so it was no real excuse. They had left only days after Karen and Bobby had learned about her cancer and, looking back and thinking on it now, Dean couldn’t believe how careless they had been.

Karen and Bobby were having a struggle all on their own, but there was no way they could outrun theirs. They just had to stand and fight and hope for the best.

It was unfair of Dean and Cas to leave without telling them when they already owed them so much.

“Aw,” Mary suddenly cooed, drawing Dean’s attention out of his haze, and he blinked to find his mother beaming at the screen, her hand on Cas’s shoulder squeezing. “That one is perfect, Cas.”

“Ugh,” Sam only replied, turning away to type at his phone.

Cas, however, looked extremely proud of himself, and he made sure to shoot Dean a smug expression before he announced, “You can’t complain about this one. If you do, it’ll hurt my feelings, and you’re going to be sleeping on the couch.”

“Oh boy,” Dean responded, and then heaved himself back onto the couch to take a look at his newly updated social profile. His haughty exterior immediately fell when he caught sight of Cas’s chosen profile picture, his heart immediately turning into putty in his chest.

It was of them.

It had been taken right after their graduation, once their gowns and caps had been thrown into the backset of the Impala and their shoes had been traded out for a pair more comfortable. Dean was wearing a crisp white button-down, his hair styled carefully and gelled back to perfection that had taken him thirty minutes in front of a mirror to do; Cas, meanwhile, was wearing a light blue button-down that neatly matched his eyes, his hair the same as it was when he had rolled out of Dean’s bed that morning but looking much more handsome than his other half. In the photo, they were smiling, absolutely beaming. Dean had stretched his arm out as far as it could go in order to snap the photo and he was holding it almost a little too high, but he had been able to perfectly capture he and Cas in bright smiles, Cas’s arms around his waist and Dean’s free arm slung around his shoulders.

Mary was right—this one was perfect.

“You’re such a sap,” Dean told Cas because he was emotionally incompetent, but he still leaned over and pressed his lips into his cheek, smiling. “Thank you.”

“I used your account to send friend requests to your mother and brother,” Cas informed him, pointing to an icon. “This will tell you when you accept, and the home button is where you get to stalk people. The rest is pretty self-explanatory.”

“Okay.”

Cas looked up, his eyebrows pulling together as he frowned. “Are you okay?”

“Hmm?” Dean asked, and then blinked. “Yeah. Yeah, I’m fine. Why?”

“Nothing,” Cas said, but his expression had turned thoughtful.

Mary ducked back into her painting studio, the sunroom at the back of the house, at around the same time Sam flicked on the television and started surfing the channels, taking no time at all before grumbling that nothing good is ever on. Cas closed his laptop and set it carefully on the coffee table, still deep in thought, and Dean took the chance to wind his arm around his boyfriend’s shoulders, pulling him against him and smiling down at him when he turned to look at him.

The three of them eventually lost themselves in the Bruce Willis action flick Sam eventually decided on, Dean immediately falling back into the vortex of his thoughts and concerns, and barely even noticing that Cas seemed be acting just the same.

~*~

Cas waited until later that night, when they were curled and pressed together in bed in the dark, the same way they had been weeks ago in a Montana motel, to ask what had been on his mind all day.

“Are you sure you’re alright?” Cas murmured, his blue eyes seeking Dean through the nighttime dark. “You’ve seemed really distant today. What’s wrong? Did I do something?”

“No, Cas, it’s not you, baby,” Dean assured him immediately, feeling like a complete asshole, pulling Cas closer to his chest like that would help reassure him. “I was just—I was thinking that I should call Bobby tomorrow.”

At first, it was like Cas didn’t know what to say. And then he let out a long breath of air, like a deflating balloon, and murmured into the quiet, “I’ve been considering the same, actually. It feels almost cruel, what we have done to him and Karen.”

“I think that means it’s time to make the call,” Dean replied, not having to make a speech about how it was the right thing to do, or how they had to get away from that town, or how Bobby and Karen wouldn’t blame them—Cas already knew all of that, didn’t need to hear Dean telling it to him again like he didn’t. So Dean just nuzzled into Cas’s neck, pressing his lips against the skin as he murmured, “He’s going to want us to go back.”

“Maybe,” Cas whispered uncertainly, chewing at his lip, “we have been away long enough.”

Dean breathed in the smell of Cas, and the smell of the soap Mary supplied in the upstairs bathroom. Cas’s fingers were gliding over Dean’s back, so soft it felt like they were practically even there, his brow furrowed tightly and thoughtfully. Dean moved up to kiss the wrinkled skin, turning Cas’s frown into a fond smile, and he bent down to kiss that when it formed, too.

“One year, free to be you and me,” Dean murmured, pressing another kiss onto the corner of Cas’s mouth that quirked up into a smile. “Extended vacations. Crisscrossing the country. We could do whatever the hell we wanted, whenever we want to. Just you and me, and the people we’ll meet, and the people we love.”

“I would love that,” Cas whispered, and then kissed him. “I love you.”

“I know,” Dean murmured back, unable to help it, like an involuntary reaction, and Cas muttered his displeasure incomprehensively into Dean’s skin as Dean laughed, holding his boyfriend tightly around his waist, his face buried in the skin of his shoulder. And they fell asleep like that, pressed together so close as if they wanted to fuse into one, and, when Dean woke up first, he laid there for hours, thinking about a day he would ask this piece of sunlight, his angel, to marry him, and Dean knew that he was finally ready to face the future.

While the future had seemed so cold and daunting so fresh in mourning, the rest of the world spread barren like a wasteland before them, Dean hadn’t known how he would be able to take the steps he would need to go forward, didn’t know if he would ever be able to shake off the cloud of gray forming inside of his mind and bringing him back into a depression so safe and sound that he could have suffered there forever and wouldn’t have felt a thing.

But, now, he had a home.

He had a family.

He had Cas.

And Dean realized that he couldn’t wait to take that step with Cas and push themselves onwards.

~*~

Dean excused himself not long after breakfast, stepping out onto the porch and turning the cordless house phone around and around in his fingers, chewing on his lip. The neighborhood around him was waking—people were walking by with their dogs, jogging past with earphone wires swinging, muddling about their yards to mow the lawn or turn on the sprinklers or wash the car. Dean looked around at the possibilities, of what could have been and what could still be, and then he started dialing slowly, his chest panging for the safe haven of a familiar home.

The phone rang once, twice, three times. Dean thought he might have good luck, but that disappeared the moment he heard it was Bobby that answered.

“Singer house,” Bobby answered gruffly.

Dean paused, nearly chickening out, before he managed to choke out, “Hey, Bobby.”

Bobby went silent. So silent that Dean could hear Karen in the background call, “Who is it, Bobby?”

“Dean? Where are you?” Bobby asked suddenly, his voice hoarse with a tone Dean knew to be panic, and Dean’s heart sank into his stomach with the weight of his guilt as Bobby continued, “Damn it, boy, you scared us half to death, you know that? We had no idea where you boys were, we couldn’t get ahold of you, and it was only hours after we put Cas’s sister in the ground!”

“I know,” Dean choked out, having to swallow the heavy emotion rising in his throat. “I know, Bobby, I’m sorry, I really am. We both are. We—we went to Portland, Bobby. We’re in Portland.”

Bobby paused, and then he said, his voice sympathetic understanding, with still a hint of irritation, “I see.”

“We just—,” Dean started, and then had to clear his throat, rubbing at his eyes furiously with one hand. “We had to get out, Bobby, that town was full of ghosts and every left turn reminded us of something, and we knew we should stay for you and Karen but—”

“Dean, son, don’t apologize to me,” Bobby started slowly, sounding hunted. “Not now, alright? Sure, I’m gonna rip you a new one later for scarin’ the hell outta us, making us think the two of you went and did a Bonnie-and-Clyde off a cliff in that car of yours, and I know Karen here’s got a few choice words herself, but now ain’t the time for this. It’s . . . damn good to hear your voice.”

“You too, Bobby.”

“Portland, huh?”

“Yeah. We’ve been staying with my mom, and Sam.”

“How are they?” Bobby asked tentatively, like he thought he would be budging into a family moment, like he didn’t know that Dean thought Bobby to be a better father than John had ever been. Dean let out a startled laugh, smiling up at the top of the porch, blinking back wayward tears he didn’t know how to explain.

“They’re good,” Dean said, laughing back another choked set of tears. He wondered if he was crying because he was happy. Relieved. He expected Bobby to be furious and, although he was, he hadn’t hung up yet, hadn’t kicked him out of his house, and this alone was mountains more kindness than John had ever showed him. “Damn, Bobby, they’re amazing. Mom’s practically the nicest person ever, like Snow White and Mary Poppins in one or something, and Sam’s just as much of a geek as I am sometimes, and he made he sign up for freakin’ Facebook and . . . It’s good. It’s damn great. This place is freaking beautiful, too, Bobby, we gotta get you and Karen out here sometime. Looks like a fucking postcard out by the mountains.”

“Good for you, son,” Bobby said, his voice suddenly so far away, like he was speaking down a tunnel but at the same time right next to Dean’s ear. Dean frowned. “How’s Cas doin’?”

“Good. Better,” Dean informed him cautiously, watching one of the neighbors wrangling with a dirty hose. “Anyway, we were thinking about hitting the road in about three days to get back to Sioux Falls, so I just figured I—we should’ve called before, of course, but I just wanted to let you know—”

“Wait, you’re headin’ back soon?” Bobby demanded, the tone gone, instead sounding so surprised. “You don’t gotta do that, boy. I know how hard you were tryin’a find your mom, and you deserve this.”

“Me and Cas figured,” Dean murmured, “that we kind of want to go home.”

Bobby was silent for a moment, and then he replied back, gruffly, “You know you both are always welcome here anytime, kid. Just don’t do this on our account.”

“We’re not,” Dean replied confidently, smiling up into the graying sky. “I think we’re ready to go back to Sioux Falls in a way that we weren’t ready after the funerals. It doesn’t feel as much of a graveyard, you know?”

Bobby didn’t answer. Dean tended to like that about his surrogate father—he didn’t say anything if he didn’t think there were any right words to say.

“It’s time to come home,” Dean whispered resolutely and, for the first time, he wasn’t afraid of what those words meant. Now, he was excited, because it meant something new, it meant something it never had before, and this—this new adventure, this new expanse of his future—was the twist in his story that he had no idea he had been waiting for this whole time.

He would be sad to leave his newfound family, but he would be back. He would walk this street again, maybe in a few months, maybe with Bobby and Karen, maybe just with Cas, but, no matter what, Dean wasn’t going to be a stranger. He had spent too much of his life pushing people away, afraid to come to close, afraid of straying from his comfort zone. He had found two pieces of his family he had always wanted to find, and he loved them so much, and he wasn’t about to let them go. Dean was ready to accept, and embrace.

This felt like the first chapter in a very, very lengthy book.

He was ready to find the words that would come next.

~*~

Mary and Sam didn’t take it hard when Dean and Cas told them at dinner the same day of the phone call that they were leaving in a few days. Sam’s face fell a little, saddened and a little disappointed, but Mary had looked at Dean and Cas with an understanding so strong that it nearly knocked Dean straight off of his chair, and Dean had made sure to assure his little brother that they would be back soon. He told them about his and Cas’s plans, to spend their gap year on the road, riding over state lines and discovering new places, and Mary’s smile was enough to light up the entire room on its own. Sam listened curiously as Dean named off monuments and wonders he had never seen, and Cas informed him excitedly about landmarks from books he wanted to visit, and Sam even chimed in to excitedly remind them about some they were missing. They assured Sam and Mary that they were the first stop, smiling and telling them that they would stop in when they could, and Mary had stood up from the table and had embraced the two of them together, pressing motherly kisses onto their foreheads.

They made the last two days count. The first, they spent a whole day driving to Mount Hood, all the way to the top, and then they went over the bridge and into Washington, following the river until they knew that they would have to turn back. They made it back when it was dark in the sky, and they had all huddled together in the family room with grilled cheeses and chocolate ice cream and had watched their favorites of the original Star Trek movies, reciting the lines from heart together, and falling into laughter until they all began to drift off in their places, one by one.

The last full day, Charlie came over, and the four youths spent the entire time playing videogames and kicking each other in the shins when they lost, bickering about popcorn and franchises and which _Lord of the Rings_ character kicked the most ass. They didn’t even notice until hours later that Mary had set up her easel behind them, and that she had been painting their forms from behind. She finished it that night, and she proudly hung it up in the front foyer, where anybody who walked in would be able to see it. Dean had embraced her for so long that he almost hadn’t wanted to let go.

When Dean and Cas woke up the morning on their day of leaving, they both seemed to have expected the goodbyes to be sadder when, really, they were nothing but hopeful.

Mary made them food, and gave them thermoses of coffee. Sam helped haul their stuff out to the car and promised Dean as they struggled under the weight of Cas’s new library additions that he would Skype them once they got back to South Dakota. Once his hands were free, Dean crossed the space and hugged his gargantuan little brother around the shoulders, holding him tight.

They said their formal goodbyes on the porch. Dean and Cas stood at the stairs, both of them fidgeting as if they didn’t fit in their own skin, not knowing what to say. Sam was the same way, standing at the door, his head sometimes brushing against the bottom of a wind-chime. Mary just couldn’t stop smiling.

“It was amazing to see you,” she told them, starting off, her eyes shining with unshed tears that her gleeful smile didn’t even have the power to burn away. “It was amazing to _meet_ you, really. I’ve just—thank you. Thank you both so much for coming here. This has been one of the best weeks of my life, and you both are welcome back at any time, no matter what. That room is yours now. I’ll even get you both a new comforter, and a new layer of paint. No buts. I’ve got two sons that’ll be coming in and out, and I’ve honestly been looking for a reason to get rid of that hideous floral comforter. Stop laughing at me, Dean.”

Dean, still laughing, swept forward and pulled his mother into a hug, pressing a kiss onto her forehead with a whispered, _I love you_ , and she gripped him back and whispered the same, and Dean felt like he was flying. The moment he let go, Cas took his place, hugging Mary so tightly that people passing by probably would have thought that he was her biological son—but, if Bobby had taught them anything, family didn’t end with blood, and Dean was so grateful at Sam and Mary’s easy acceptance of Cas that he sometimes couldn’t breathe with how thankful he was. Cas kissed the top of Mary’s head and offered her a soft smile as he backed away, Dean’s hand automatically reaching out and touching the small of his back, keeping him safely away from accidentally backing down the front steps.

It, sadly, wouldn’t have been the first time.

“How about you, Sammy?” Dean demanded, turning to smirk at his little brother. “Got a speech ready?”

“Screw you, jerk,” Sam said, and then all six-foot-three of him was across the porch and throwing his arms around Dean, squeezing, and Dean was thumping him on the back half because he really loved the loser, and half because his airways were being crushed by a lovey-dovey sasquatch.

Sam embraced Cas next, and it only appeared to be slightly less crushing. Sam and Cas grinned at each other as they stepped away, already having fallen into camaraderie like soldiers falling into a march, and Dean was smiling so wide that his face was starting to hurt.

“You better get going,” Mary announced, clearing her throat but still smiling angelically. “I don’t want you leaving too late. Remember to call or text when you get to the motel if you stop, or South Dakota if you don’t, alright?”

“Sure thing, Mom,” Dean said, practically catching himself off-guard with the ease of the phrase. “Promise.”

“Good,” she said, and Dean and Cas turned slightly to walk down the steps, Dean reaching into his pocket and pulling out the keys. Sam watched them casually, smiling, but Mary looked like she was dropping them off for their first day of kindergarten. “Are you sure you didn’t forget anything?” she called to them anxiously once they hit the street. Dean turned around, grinning.

“If we did,” he called back, “we’ll be seeing you soon, anyway.”

Mary smiled, acquiescing. Dean had to resist the urge to close the space and hug her again.

He would have time, he had to remind himself as they walked to the car, Cas breaking away to walk around the hood for the passenger’s side. Dean glanced back over his shoulder as Cas opened the door, settling down in his space, the co-pilot position that always felt so rightfully his, and Dean took in the sight of his mom and little brother standing on the steps, Mary’s arm around Sam’s waist because she couldn’t reach his shoulders anymore, both of their smiles identical and blinding. Dean lifted his arm in one lame wave and they waved back, and it was only then that he opened the door and climbed inside of the car, settling in and turning on the engine in one swift motion. Cas watched him, already smiling.

“We’ll be back soon,” he assured him confidently, reaching over and squeezing one of Dean’s hands on the steering wheel. He pulled away as Dean moved away from the curb, both of them ducking to wave and smile at Sam and Mary one last time, and the two beamed at them and waved like crazy people, making Dean laugh. He watched them disappear slowly from the rearview mirror, sinking back in the horizon, until they turned a corner, and he couldn’t see them anymore. Dean swallowed hard, gripping the wheel just a little tighter, pushing away his impulse to turn around.

Because Cas was right. They would be back soon. They would see them again probably before they even really started to miss them. But, for now, they had to be somewhere else. They had to go home, to a town that would always have it’s ghosts, but they wouldn’t be malevolent. They had to go back and embrace what they had left behind—they had to come to terms with John’s death, and Anna’s, and Karen’s cancer, and all of the repercussions that came with living in reality. And although it would hurt, and it wouldn’t be pleasant, it was what they had to do. Because responsibility wasn’t running from the battleground. It was charging into it with a clear head, ready to claim victory over all of the battles that must be fought.

Their heads were cleared now. Their conscious was, too.

Dean had never realized how heavy grief and loss was until it had been replaced with joy and calm, and he was finally able to lift his chin and look up towards the sky and hope.

Cas, always sitting next to him, took Dean’s right hand gently from the wheel and laid it in between them, shifting closer. Dean took his eyes off the road for a moment to lean over and kiss the top of Cas’s head, so at peace, so much in love, that he wished it would be this way for the rest of his life.

Cas and Dean had their futures ahead of them, and it was about time they started carving out a place for themselves in it. It was about time they looked ahead, and they saw hope.

Dean turned the car back home, never forgetting the one that they said a temporary see-you-later to in the rearview mirror, and he dared to let himself believe.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading!
> 
> My Tumblr: shortenedlanguage.tumblr.com
> 
> xo Slang


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